all photos courtesy Spencer Menzel
GIVERS
‘I WILL NOT
WASTE THIS DAY’ PAVE Southeast Raleigh Charter builds scholars, community
by HAMPTON WILLIAMS HOFER
E
VERY MORNING, EACH OF THE 230 CHILDREN AT PAVE, SOUTHEAST Raleigh’s first charter school, is greeted at the door with a handshake from the principal. Education is taken seriously here: students are called scholars, they wear neat uniforms, and they stick to a structured and rigorous academic curriculum. The classrooms at PAVE have names like University of Georgia and Wake Forest. “Many of our scholars don’t have a family member who has gone to college,” says PAVE founder and CEO Spencer Robertson, “so we make the idea accessible. College is always in the conversation.” The school, which was founded in 2015 and currently offers kindergarten through third grade, is comprised almost entirely of minority and low-income students, many of whom speak English as a second language. SEPTEMBER 2017 | 121
